Player housing and personal stores

Mercurio · April 2014

I'm fairly sure player housing will make its way into the game; and here is a suggestion for implementation that adds some much needed functionality and coolness to the concept. Personal stores. EQ2 had an aspect to housing where you could set up a 'shop' in your house where people could come physically to buy your stuff - avoiding the auction house cut. It was an awesome way to show off your house and RP a shopkeeper, as well as broadening the scope of the economy. What do you fine people think?

phermitgb · April 2014

since you asked...

I usually don't mind various options to player-initiated economies, as I rarely use them myself - so whatever works for other people, kudos, and occasionally I'll take advantage of them myself.

However...just from the scenario you described, I think you'd be drastically undercutting the whole concept of guild-based auction houses, which have always seemed a tad awkward to me, but DO seem to be a fundamental design choice for the devs of ESO.

I suspect you're going to find significant resistance to the idea, at least from the developer side, unless you can figure out exactly what it is they're hoping to accomplish with guild-based auction houses, and somehow create your home-based shop keeper stall to not interfere with the guild stores.

accessibility to your home store is also going to depend heavily on how they design housing - if housing neighborhoods are *instanced*, like in LOTRO, you're going to have to work a LOT harder to build enough "brand" recognition to attract people to your storefront - which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but would definitely require a significant amount of effort on your part.

there are other ways to arrange housing, and I suspect each method will change the accessibility of your storefront and how you reach customers...at which point, a guild store might turn out to be the better option

*shrug* - it's not a bad idea on the surface of it - I just think that if you really want to make an impact on the game with it, you're going to have to learn more about the development of the game from the dev side of things, and integrate your ideas with where the devs are going

still - best of luck with that!

dwaightb16_ESO · April 2014

ArcheAge is doing a good job with that too.

Saihung423 · April 2014

I LOVED that feature in EQ2. It was great to make a little store front. They had display cases you could craft as a carpenter.

Man...seriously, I hope this game rips off EQ2 features like that, lmao. I really do. I had a ratonga berserker living in Freeport with a home built to be an inn called "The Krippled Kerra". Had different rooms with house pets as "tenants" and only sold food and drink from his store. There were also various things in it I had picked up over the years that gave free food and drink servings.

I love that game so much....should have kept playing tbh. But I just...grew away from it and never went back. Spent six years playing and it was great.

Mercurio · April 2014

Thanks for the reply and insights! I guess the way it worked in EQ2 was because of its integration to the global AH (which ESO doesn't have). You could see something you wanted on the AH, and it would list the seller and their address, where you could go to save on the AH cut.

I think ESO could accomplish this with a "market board" or something, like a non-functional global AH that simply lists wares and sellers/addresses/locations. You could look up an item you want, then travel to the appropriate shop. Of course, this does undermine the guild store concept a bit, but IMO that needs some change as well.

Mercurio · April 2014

Yes, saihung! That was an awesome feature that brought so much flavor. Just hearing your story makes me miss that game LOL. I'm sure there are many different implementations ZOS could use to make it "fit" in the overall economic scheme.

Tarwin · April 2014

Just give me a locker at the YMCA to dump my crafting mats into

Pristia · April 2014

UO had this back in the late 90's and so did DAoC in the early 00's, the UO merchants stood inside or outside your house and held your items for sale, you could change thier appearance and give them things like torches to hold. DAoC had a side porch on your house and it held a merchant to sell your items, also at the entrance to the housing area, there was a "bilboard" you could interact with to see what was for sale at all the merchants in the area. You could buy there for a fee, or go to the house and get it for the asking price.